Committee deals setback to Snowbasin owner Holding

Snowbasin's Earl Holding will not receive $5 million for a new access road to his ski resort if lawmakers follow a resolution ap-proved by a House committee Tuesday.

Rep. Steve Barth, D-Salt Lake, wants to make it clear that the owner of Snowbasin Resort, Little America Hotels and Sinclair Oil must pay for the access road himself.Holding had no representative at the committee hearing, and after he and his firms were soundly criticized by various individuals, several of the Republican lawmakers, while voting for the resolution, said Holding's motives should not be questioned nor his character criticized.

Barth said that in 1989 when the Legislature agreed to build the Trappers Loop Highway, Holding and Snowbasin officials promised they would build an access road from the new highway to the ski resort with their own money. But now, said Barth, there is talk of the state road officials using either state funds or federal highway funds to build the road.

Previously, one of Holding's top officials told the Deseret News that the ski resort had no plans to build the road and that there was another way into the resort, although that road was not suitable for buses and other large vehicles likely needed to accommodate the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Snowbasin is the site of the downhill and other alpine skiing events.

But Tuesday legislators were not interested in such quibbling. They unanimously passed Barth's resolution, with the support of the Utah League of Cities and Towns and an environmentalist, Ivan Webber, who said he quit the advisory committee to the Utah Games over what he termed the greed of Snowbasin in acquiring land and facilities to accommodate the events.